Memorial
by Brochelle
Summary: Roland was momentarily taken aback by the Spartan's question. It seemed sort of silly. Post-Halo 4. Head's up, I wrote this without any background info on Roland aside from what I've seen of him in the Spartan ops cutscenes.


The Infinity's shipboard AI, Roland, took an near-immediate interest in the Master Chief. Perhaps it was the stigma surrounding the Spartan - his ability to defy the odds, his curious tendency to fall from heights and still survive with few bruises to show - that entertained Roland. Then again, it could have been the fact that the Chief had detonated a nuclear warhead at point-blank range and had survived, with little to no reaction to the resulting radiation, and no damage to his outdated armor - that in itself would have been enough to grab the interest of anyone.

But if Roland was being honest, the interest he held in John-117 had mostly to do with Cortana.

As far as he could tell from the Spartan's mission logs, the AI had begun to show personality degradation sometime in the past week, though Cortana's destabilization had started much earlier than that. The Spartan reported that it suffered from mood swings, the effects of which disrupted his armor's head's up display and even the AI's ability to speak. Several logs mentioned that Cortana often seemed detached and distracted, lost in memory or constantly preoccupied with even the simplest of tasks. Interestingly enough, his final report on the matter was that the AI had sacrificed itself - "split off rampant personality spikes to overwhelm the Didact's shield system" - in order to save the Chief.

The report was a little fuzzy on exactly how he managed to survive the nuclear explosion, which also completely obliterated the Composer artifact.

Roland mused over Cortana's final decision, and how curiously it contrasted the AI's previous behavior. For an entity that had reached such a level of internal confusion and emotion and fragmentation, its ability to reach for UNSC protocol and protect its host - to ignore blindness and gain sight - was awe-inspiring. Such a transition almost implied that Cortana had reached metastability; which similarly implied that UNSC protocol had no control over her. Interest piqued, Roland stored the revelation within his memory banks so that he could research it later.

Roland himself was a smart AI who would one day face the same fate as Cortana. Perhaps not as glorified as its death had been, but he would indeed spiral into a series of behavioral traits before succumbing to a smothering, choking need for more data. Not that he would experience the latter in force - he'd be shut down as soon as his programmed behavior started to change by itself. He had read several reports of previous AIs and their shutdown procedures, and it all seemed rather clinical. His distaste toward it would be nonexistent by the time he would be deactivated - he would be a tangled mess of data at that point, and any cognitive thought process would be that of an insane man. No, he had no reason to worry about that day.

But still. Some part of him remained morbidly curious in Cortana's final days. He wanted to know if it hurt - how could a nonphysical entity without nerve endings hurt? he countered - and if it was a quick process. He wondered if the Chief's interface with the AI became painful as it consumed more data. If his life had ever been threatened by its violent mood swings and hallucinations.

Roland disembarked from the train of thought and rifled through the Infinity's database. It had been months since the conflict with the Didact; the ship was well under repairs, and they had already received orders to lead a fleet of warships back to Requiem. The Chief's interaction with the Forerunner known as the Librarian had interested many of the higher ups, and once they'd had their fill of the Chief's adventure through deep space, he had been assigned to the Infinity.

If memory served - and it always would - then he would be onboard now.

Roland dedicated a few subroutines to the ship's maintenance and sought after the Spartan. He had recently input his personal codes at the armory on the fourth level of the ship and his transponder registered at the shooting range, so finding him would require a little less deduction skills than Roland was used to employing. A jump and a shimmy through the network - a few nanoseconds of a digital dance through data and code later - and he was projecting his avatar on a holotank, mere feet from where the Chief was standing.

Roland noted with a figment of disappointment that the Spartan didn't flinch at his sudden appearance. The towering man simply turned his head away from the target at the far end of the range - fractionally, though, the Spartan version of a courteous nod - and stared. Armorless, the Chief was still quite imposing for a human. He was a couple inches taller than six feet, and built like a tank; muscles rippled under the black undersuit he wore. His dark hair was cut short and ribboned with gray, and his eyes were a more-green-than-brown hazel color.

The Chief stared for a second longer, then shifted his attention back to the target. He fired the gun, and some part of Roland's processes alerted him that the target had been hit.

"Master Chief!" Roland said, smiling jauntily. "Glad I could catch you."

"What do you need?" the Chief replied.

His voice sounds like he gargles with gravel on a nightly basis, Roland thought. Part of him couldn't help but wonder if it was a show of masculinity, or if he actually sounded like a bear.

"Questions answered. About your AI, Cortana-"

The Chief fired the gun again, the resounding blast interrupting Roland mid-sentence. Cortana's name died on his figurative lips as he checked the Chief's vitals via his neural implants. His pulse had quickened, and his brain was registering chemical reactions that otherwise translated as textbook anxiety. Roland found that curious as well; such a cocktail of responses to a mention of his former companion almost implied there was residual pain over the AI's death. It had been months since then.

"As someone who will most likely face similar issues in the future," he continued, "I would like to take note of what your AI went through. Symptoms to refer back to when my core may not be so... reliable."

The Spartan paused before responding. His arms lowered the gun, and he seemed to be thinking carefully. Like many of the other super soldiers Roland had met, the Chief's ability to maintain a stoic attitude was limited to his voice; his emotions and internal conflicts were spelled out across his face, veiled only slightly by practice. Finally, the Chief placed the gun on a table adjacent to the stall, and turned his full attention to Roland.

"Anything in particular?"

Had he breath, Roland would have sighed in relief. The soldier's behavior had dictated a dangerous level of sensitivity toward the subject; if he had taken a step in the wrong direction, the conversation could have reached a permanent dead end.

"Your mission logs say it often shouted at you. You theorized it was shouting over the voices of the rampant personality spikes in the system-?"

"Her."

Roland, excited that the conversation was moving forward, sensed his processors slow down as he backtracked to correct his error. Brief confusion flashed across his face at the Spartan's correction.

"Her?"

The Spartan stared at him. Had he been human, Roland would have recoiled under the intense gaze.

"Yes."

Roland noted this with interest. "Back to my question-"

"-Yes, that was my theory," the Chief cut him off, and smoothly turned around to pick up his gun again. He checked the weapon with a sort of boredom that indicated the desire to stop talking.

"You think she was combatting herself? That her behavior was a conscious response to... sub-behavior? Perhaps similar to schizophrenia?"

The Spartan nodded. Roland could almost sense the man's reluctance to talk. Quietly he stored away the information about schizophrenia, promising to himself that he would research it later. If he could learn to ignore multiple voices at once, perhaps he could delay rampancy - should his day ever come.

The Chief had already set his sights on the target again. He loosed a shot, and again it registered as a hit.

Roland contemplated abandoning his objective and returning his consciousness to the bridge, when the Chief put the gun on the table again and faced him.

"Was there a memorial?"

Roland's avatar's face contorted into a frown. "For whom?"

The Chief paused, tasting his words.

"Those who died at New Phoenix."

"I don't believe so, sir."

The Chief nodded to himself, then looked to the gun, as if contemplating picking it up again. He didn't.

"What about those who died on the Ark?" the Chief asked, turning to Roland. "The Halo rings?"

Roland rapidly checked the databanks, refreshing his memory on old history - old history for an AI, at least, since he hadn't been put into service until after the events on the Ark.

There had been a memorial, but it had been quiet, not at all a big fuss in the media like some of the others that followed. A small selection of marines had attended, as did Admiral Hood and the Sangheili representative, the Arbiter. The memorial itself had been a hastily arranged Pelican wing, settled on a hill outside Voi. Dozens of photographs of those who had died had been taped in various places across the wing, along with carved notes of love or gratitude.

"Yes," Roland replied. It had only been a fraction of a second since the Chief had asked. "Yes, there was. Rumor has it that you were noted on the memorial as well, despite ONI taboo. Would you like photographic references?"

"No. I was mentioned?"

"If by 'mentioned', you mean 'scrawled on the side of a slab of metal', then yes. You were mentioned."

"Cortana wasn't?"

The question flushed Roland's processors with an influx of additional questions. No, he thought. Why would a computer program be acknowledged? It didn't make sense to ask such a thing. He recognized irritation at the fact the conversation wasn't going the way he intended.

But the more he mulled over it, the more sense it made. Artificial intelligences controlled whole warships; they directed fleets of dropships and they controlled weapons drops. They calculated risk factors and statistics that, without the help of their vast processing power, would take the average human hours to compute. They were more than the glorified calculators that their public acknowledgement implied.

When Roland finally died, would he be remembered or replaced?

His thoughts slowed as he realized his faux pas. AIs didn't die; they were deactivated. Focusing on the correction allowed him to bypass the initial question.

"No," Roland replied blankly. "I suppose the UNSC didn't see fit to recognize a machine."

As soon as he finished speaking, Roland realized why the Chief hadn't taken on another AI yet.

Weeks ago, Roland had intercepted a message between ONI and the Chief - top secret, mum's the word - that Catherine Halsey, the aged war criminal and brilliant scientist, had offered to start work on another Cortana model. Take that information and add it to the Spartan's obvious sensitivity toward the subject matter, and it didn't take a Holmes to figure it out.

Replacing Cortana would mean defeat; acceptance that she was gone. At the end of the day, the Chief could lie his way through all the psych exams he wanted. He wasn't over his companion's death.

He quite possibly blamed himself.

Suddenly, Roland's questions felt like an obscene intrusion on the Spartan's healing process, and programmed regret sent a pang through his core. With it came dozens of questions that would never be answered, including the ones that Roland had come to ask to begin with.

Understanding that he had overstayed his welcome, Roland bid farewell to the Spartan and faded into digital oblivion.


End file.
